


Little Wisdom

by a_t_rain



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Gen, Jackson's Whole, Sibling Rivalry, space mafia family values
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 18:39:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18946612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_t_rain/pseuds/a_t_rain
Summary: A moment from a Jackson's Whole childhood.





	Little Wisdom

**Author's Note:**

> One of a loosely connected series of Arqua family backstory / behind-the-scenes ficlets. The others, in rough chronological order, are [Cargo (Shiv and Udine), ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6047382)[Glamis Hath Murdered Sleep](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10958625) (Udine), [Loyalty](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4314537) (Rish), [Ordinary](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6498709) (Topaz), [Magnetism and Gravitation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5617924) (Amiri), and [Courage and Hope](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9687332) (Topaz).

“Kangaroo!” calls Rish, and the dance studio is suddenly full of hopping, four girls crouching down and springing up in great, long bounds. They hold their upper arms close to their sides and their hands bent in front of their chests, like the kangaroos in the _Animals of Earth_ vid. Pazzy tries to imitate the humped stance they have when they graze, hips high; but, not having long feet or a tail to balance on, she falls forward and bumps her nose on the exercise mat. The rest of the Jewels giggle.

“You lose,” says Em, “so you have to skip your turn. Tau Cetan beaded lizard!”

“ _Bor-ing_ ,” complains Pearl, but she gets down on her belly and crawls on her hands with the others anyway, wrists flexed, legs whipping back and forth like a beaded lizard’s tail.

“Hummingbird!” calls Pearl.

“ _Not_ fair,” says Rish. “I can’t move my arms that fast.”

“Neither can the rest of us,” says Pazzy. “ _Pretend_.”

They leap up, four sets of differently colored arms churning the air until they blur. Pidge blinks as she watches: for a split second, they really do seem to hover in mid-air.

“Hey,” she says. “Can I play?”

“No,” says Pearl quickly, before Pazzy can say yes. Before Ruby got too grown-up to be interested in the animal game, the rules had been clear: only Jewels were allowed, and Ruby got to do all the calling. Pazzy is the oldest one who still counts as a kid, and she’s softer, easier to persuade. Pidge has overheard Mama and Dada worrying about Pazzy.

“Why not?”

“Because you wouldn’t be any good at it,” says Pearl.

“That’s not nice,” says Pazzy. “Pidge can play if she wants.”

“Never _mind_ ,” says Pidge quickly. Pearl is right; she wouldn’t be good. She isn’t _clumsy_ , exactly; she is very good at float-skiing and even ice skating, but she can’t do the things the Jewels can do with their bodies. And Pazzy always tries to be _nice_ about it, which makes it worse.

“Go and see what Star’s doing,” suggests Em.

“I _hate_ Star,” says Pidge. Star has been mean to her for _weeks_ , ever since Pidge started her periods. Star and Pearl and even Pazzy haven’t had theirs yet, which makes Pidge feel like a _freak_ , but for some reason Star is _jealous_. Pidge doesn’t understand why, since the whole business is messy and uncomfortable and it wasn’t like she asked to be the first, but Star keeps saying that the only reason it happened so early for Pidge is that she’s fat, so clearly she does mind. It isn’t even true that Pidge is fat; at most, she was only ever a little plump, and over the last year she’s shot up so fast that she now seems exactly the right size for her height.

“Well, go play with Amiri,” says Pearl.

“Amiri’s a _baby_ ,” says Pidge, which earns her a kick in the shin from Rish, who is even younger, not quite eight.

“Come on,” says Rish to the others, “it’s my turn again. Mole!”

“Hey, no fair, you’re closer to the ground than the rest of us,” says Pearl, but they all turn back to their game, scuttling around with their eyes closed and digging at the gym mats and giggling. Pidge watches them for a moment, then turns away.

* * *

Her arm is sore where her new contraceptive implant is. Dr. Kim said it would stop hurting in a week or two, but she can feel the hardness of it under her skin, strange and uncomfortable, and she knows it will be there forever, or anyway until she’s _old_. She hadn’t particularly wanted one, and Dr. Kim said there wasn’t any need to get one right away since she was only a child, but Mama had overruled Dr. Kim with a _look_. Pidge had understood. You never know what might happen. Better safe than sorry. Pidge is old enough to know how quickly fortunes can change on Jackson’s Whole, and to have heard of the things that sometimes happen to Houseless girls.

All of a sudden, _everything_ seems terrible, and she runs to look for her Dada, who has always been the person who can make things less terrible.

“They’re being _mean_ ,” wails Pidge as she bursts into his office. “Make them _stop!_ ”

“Who’s being mean?” Dada asks absently. He is in the middle of some sort of paperwork for the Baron, and Pidge knows she really shouldn’t have interrupted – except, unlike Mama, he always has _time_ for them.

“ _All_ of them,” says Pidge, although Pazzy and even Em haven’t really said anything mean. They are still _Jewels_ , and right now Pidge feels like she hates all the Jewels, all their private jokes and games that she isn’t allowed to be part of. Four against one just isn’t _fair_. “And Rish kicked me.” She hitches up her skirt to show him the damage, although it hasn’t started to go black-and-blue yet so it doesn’t look very impressive. Maybe she should have waited.

Dada turns and gives her his full attention. “And what are you going to do about it, Little Wisdom?”

“I’m going to get you to make them stop,” says Pidge. “I _told_ you, that’s why I’m here.” Dada can definitely make the others stop; he can make people do almost everything he wants, just by looking at them the right way.

“No, Little Wisdom, I asked you what _you_ are going to do about it.”

“ _You’re_ not going to do anything?” says Pidge, now very close to tears.

Dada draws her closer. “No, I’m not. Because I won’t always be here, and _you_ need to know how to handle things for yourself. All of you kids do. You understand?”

“Yes,” says Pidge. Now that she thinks about it, Mama and Dada never do intervene in their quarrels unless one of the kids is about to draw blood, and she’d always just assumed they weren’t paying attention, but now it seems there might be more to it. “I could be mean right back.”

“You could. Do you think that will work?”

“Not really,” says Pidge, because it’s what Star and Erik always do, and it doesn’t ever seem to have any real effect on the Jewels. If it doesn’t work for them, it won’t work for Pidge either, since she isn’t as quick at thinking up nasty things to say as Star is. Besides, Erik sneers at the Jewels for being _just dancers_ when Mama and Dada are already teaching him the business of managing House Cordonah, and they only smile. That sort of insult would be even less effective coming from Pidge, who isn’t learning the business of managing House Cordonah.

Could she? If she did, that would be something that was _hers_ and not theirs. And she isn’t so very much younger than Erik, only three years and a few months.

“What are you doing for the Baron?” she asks.

Dada sighs. “Looking over contracts. The sort of thing your mother usually does, but the Baron needed her along for his meeting with Baron Fell.”

He turns back to his work. Pidge watches him for a while, as the furrows in his forehead get deeper and deeper, and he silently sounds out the longer words with his lips. Dada is a slow reader. It isn’t that he _can’t_ , just that it isn’t particularly easy for him, and he always wants to read things three or four times over to be absolutely sure he understands them properly. It’s always Mama who supervises their education, painstaking and demanding; all that Dada has to say on the topic is _I want you kids to have what I never got_.

“I could read it to you,” suggests Pidge, uncertain how he’ll take this. “It might go faster that way.”

“It’s awfully complicated, sweetling. A lot of financial and legal language. The exact words matter.”

“I can get it right. I’m almost eleven.”

“Well,” says Dada, handing her his reader with the contract, “let’s see how you do, Little Wisdom.”

* * *

“Good job,” says Dada. “Now – can you tell me what was wrong with that contract?”

Pidge thinks and thinks. It had _sounded_ all right. She looks back and starts working through it line by line.

_… the sum of two million dollars, to be paid to House Cordonah …_

She thinks back to the _Animals of Earth_ vid, and what the narrator had said about kangaroo farming on Earth: how many billions of dollars it brought in per year. _Australian_ dollars.

“It doesn’t say what currency.” Pidge is proud of herself for having spotted this. “Everybody always thinks of _Betan_ dollars when they hear ‘dollars,’ but there are other kinds of dollar.”

“ _Very_ good,” says Dada, looking genuinely impressed. “I don’t think any of the others would have caught that. Erik didn’t, when House Neyfakh tried to pull the same thing.”

 _Ha_ , thinks Pidge to herself, as she flips to the next document on the reader. She’s going to have something to hold over _Erik_ that evening. Who cares about the Jewels, anyway?


End file.
